


Drop by Drop is The Water Pot Filled

by slattern



Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [7]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1980 we're having sex on a futon, Anal Sex, Angels in America - Freeform, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Barebacking, Body Hair, Bottom Aziraphale (Good Omens), Caretaking, Creampie, Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Cruising, Cuckolding, Current events may be influencing author, Dom/sub Undertones, Drug Use, EST, Empathy, Episode: s01e03 Hard Times, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Femdom, Fire Island, Gangbang, HIV/AIDS Crisis, Hollywood, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, Imagine Fleetwood Mac Playing, LGBTQIA History, Larry Kramer, Laurel Canyon - Freeform, Listen - Crowley is fine ok., Los Angeles, M/M, Martyrdom, Metaphysical Sex, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Nature is never wrong only responding, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Open Marriage, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), POV Crowley (Good Omens), Pining, Pining Through History, Queer History, Recreational Drug Use, Sickfic, Switches, Switching, Threesome - F/M/M, Top Aziraphale (Good Omens), Top Crowley (Good Omens), Vaginal Sex, Venice, Wet & Messy, dissociating, self-realization, slightly canon divergent, social distancing fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:14:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23196103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slattern/pseuds/slattern
Summary: It's 1980, and Crowley and Aziraphale are taking some time in America. Laurel Canyon, Fire Island, self-realization, cruising, pain and suffering, care and connection.-------------Maybe it's time for a reunion. Crowley is ready to get bicoastal; he’s feeling reckless. He’d met those New York guys a few months ago at that amazing thing with Harry, his ‘Radical Faeries’. He’d hook up with them in Manhattan and have his hands down Aziraphale’s pants in no time. Or something. Maybe Crowley would go ahead and burst into tears. That really would be a thing.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Original Characters, Crowley/Original Characters
Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571059
Comments: 83
Kudos: 80





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley escapes London for LA for a few years. The seventies.
> 
> **********  
> Crowley loved EST. Like a lot of the other cults, sects, experiences, programs and institutes he’d hung around, explored, and enjoyed since coming to California in 1969. Things had gotten a bit hot in London for a flashy gangster, and a trip overseas was in order. There may have been other reasons. Despite the tartan peace offering stored in his safe, that evening in Soho hadn’t exactly been a feel good scene. How long were they going to do this? Forever, apparently. Well Crowley needed a fucking break from it, so he’s in California enjoying the music, the weed, the consciousness raising, and all the free love he can eat. Maybe he’d be missed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I did think today that I picked a hell of a year to get heavily into a new creative and community passion that is basically totally online... thanks friends. Seriously thank you to everyone who's a part of this fandom, all your kudos and comments and your amazing stories and art and gifs and everything are a real refuge right now. Love, slattern. 
> 
> [EST (Erhard Standard Training)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training) was a part of the [Human Potential Movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Potential_Movement), seeking to release the untapped potential of all humans through a variety of methods. 
> 
> CW: drug use, and check the tags for other content
> 
> Enormous thanks to [laurashapiro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurashapiro/) , your incisive and thoughtful comments and questions made my story so much better than I could have imagined, and to [ tyrograph ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyrograph%22) for your precision copyediting and empathic and insightful comments (as well as a steady stream of amazing artwork), and to both of you for the very appreciated and needed cheering and encouragement.
> 
> The song I had on repeat while writing this chapter is [Superstar by MARINA ](https://open.spotify.com/track/4yl3k557dZRRQj0P9GWP55), but the entire album 'Rumours' by Fleetwood Mac also works.

_Think not lightly of good, saying, "It will not come to me." Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise person, gathering it little by little, is filled with good._ Dhammapada v. 122

Laurel Canyon, 1980.

Crowley loved EST. Like a lot of the other cults, sects, experiences, programs and institutes he’d hung around, explored, and enjoyed since coming to California in 1969. Things had gotten a bit hot in London for a flashy gangster, and a trip overseas was in order. There may have been other reasons. Despite the tartan peace offering stored in his safe, that evening in Soho hadn’t exactly been a feel good scene. How long were they going to do this? Forever, apparently. Well Crowley needed a fucking break from it, so he’s in California enjoying the music, the weed, the consciousness raising, and all the free love he can eat. Maybe he’d be missed.

A certain angel had, for assuredly unrelated reasons, decided around the same time that he’d better die - and stay dead for a few decades - until he could come back as his own nephew or whatever Dickensian device he’d settle on, and repossess the bookshop. So he was in America too. But not here. He stayed on the East Coast, familiar ground from their last foray to the New World. New York, Crowley thought. Christopher Street. Figures.

It’s not hunger, exactly, that drives him into the crowded rooms of spiritual seekers, of sexual explorers and psychedelic reef divers. He’s been doing it for so long there’s no question of why, if there ever was. It’s his nature, to slither into the narrow spaces, to make room, roots pushing apart stones, insects tearing out of their pupae, soft gilled mushrooms blooming in the crack of a rotting log. He’s done it in tents and temples, with his words and with his fingers, pushing tiny seeds into the dark loam of the subconscious, where they’ll burst forth in their season, a riot of fertile possibility, of lawless, perfumed permission.

EST was really top-notch. The participants were loopy from the long hours, the overwhelming experience designed to crack you open, unmoor you completely from the shared delusion of material reality, to force enlightenment on you like a hammer on a coconut. Crowley didn’t have to lift a finger. It was like sinking into a warm bath; the pulsing, unguarded nebulae of the souls around him completely open to his energetic tendrils, green and gold mycelium strands, slipping into blood streams, burrowing into neuroreceptors. He could be in 100 people, 200 people at once. It was intoxicating.

Even in the overwhelming, drunken state that these mass experiences let him reach (It almost did the trick. Almost.) some souls stood out, made him want to get closer, go deeper. That had been Luz and Zev, this morning. They’d gone back to their place in Laurel Canyon in the afternoon, and smoked some grass and done a few lines. It’s evening now, and Luz is riding Crowley as he lies on his back on the couple’s plush organic futon. His aviator glasses are discarded on the table in the hall, tossed at the base of a carved wooden dancer Zev brought back from Thailand. He's not worried about his eyes with them. Crowley's learned many human ways over the millennia, and the glamour that makes his slit pupils not matter is one of them. The cantrip uses the magic of his body, and the couple's too. They never notice anything, and Crowley doesn't give it another thought. 

Crowley can hear Zev, Luz's husband, panting harshly in his ear. But Zev can only watch. That had been Crowley’s test question, and they passed. Luz’s eyes had darkened at the demon’s strict tone with her husband. Crowley sent a frisson along the strands of energy between them, which she received with a shiver. The shape of the three of them began to reveal itself to him. 

Her waist is tiny over the lush flare of her hips. Crowley’s hands span her body, his thumbs hovering, then stroking her clit, exposed by the split of her dark, wet sex, opened on Crowley’s bare cock. Luz is running her hands up her sides, cupping her breasts and pinching the nipples. She looks debauched. Crowley groans at the sight of her, thrusting deep and holding inside for a few shared breaths. They’re both getting close, and Zev is sounding increasingly desperate, huffing and crying from the pillow next to Crowley. His hands twist the sheet as he pushes his hips up into nothing. With a moaning exhale, Luz stretches the length of her body against the demon, and extends her hand to her husband’s chest, pressing him flat on the mattress. ‘Shhhh….’ Zev quiets, except for the sound of his rapid breaths through his nostrils. Grinning, Crowley moves his hands to Luz’s spread ass, fucking up into her at a shallow angle, her small breasts slipping across his body in the wet of their sweat. They cry out their climax one after the other, into each other’s mouths. Crowley keeps his cock in her after he comes, he’s still mostly hard, and it’s so wet, she was drenched and now she’s full of his spend. Her pussy still sensitive after her orgasm, Luz moans into Crowley’s mouth with each thrust. Her hand stays on Zev’s chest until Crowley finally pulls out of her, wetness shining on his cock and spilling onto both of them.

They get cleaned up and make an impromptu picnic out of the only things in the house - Ritz crackers and ginger ale. Crowley declines the food. The night is young.

They take the ginger ale and another joint back to the futon. Zev is relaxed and open, invigorated by his humiliation. The two of them are delicious. Crowley is going to show them a very good time indeed.

“So. Do you want to keep hanging out?” Zev’s voice is deep, perhaps even seductively so. He's standing next to the bed bare-chested, a patterned sarong wrapped around his waist.

“Yes, I do.” Crowley puts a suggestive purr into his words. He turns and looks at Luz, who's sitting cross-legged on the mattress, a short white silk robe with a colourful butterfly pattern pulled over her upper body. The dense, exuberant curls of her pubic hair are visible in her lap, contrasting with the pale fabric. She's still wet, and Crowley can smell her briny sex and his come between her legs.

"You want me to fuck him."

Her toes curl and her mouth opens. She's looking at her husband when she answers Crowley. "Yes. Yes, I'd like that." She keeps her face relaxed as it’s turned to Zev, open, inviting, desirous, tempting. Good girl, well done. 

Crowley slithers to the edge of the bed and slips his feet onto the floor. He's naked, and his cock is starting to rise again as he stands and moves towards the end of the bed. He sees Zev's eyes dart to it, curious and afraid. Crowley circles around him.

He looks over at Luz, her face slack with desire, her mouth open as she exhales slowly. Crowley can see her wrestling with the force of it, trying not to scare her partner, but wanting it so much. She's doing so well, threading the needle of temptation, inviting her lover to the place she wants to go. Crowley is behind the other man now, he wraps his arms around his barrel chest, prickly with dark body hair over the softness of his skin. He slides his face against Zev's, the human's glossy black beard wiry against the demon's cheek. With a soft growl, Crowley breathes the man's scent; desire and fear, weed, tonka bean and patchouli. Zev won't be able to resist this.

Zev is still in the demon’s arms, held by his wife’s gaze. Crowley slowly draws his nails up the man’s padded ribcage. He’s let them grow long, just past his fingertips, almond shaped. A shiver races across Zev’s torso ahead of Crowley’s nails, reaching his face with a gasp. Crowley keeps stroking, alternating between the scrape of nails and the pressure of his palms. Zev’s dick is completely hard, his sarong tenting in a very unsubtle way. Crowley reaches down a hand and manages to untie the knot holding the sarong up, releasing it with a little flourish aimed at Luz. Her face splits into a grin, her smile like a sunbeam, pleasure animating her face and the pleasing asymmetry of her gap-tooth mouth. She spreads her legs and leans back on the pile of pillows at the back of the bed. The butterfly robe falls open, revealing the dark nipples of her small breasts. She’s touching herself, her belly, softly, running her fingertips across her skin, slightly goosefleshed under her hands. Zev groans weakly, and Crowley sinks his teeth into the man’s tender neck, stifling his own moan.

Zev's skin tastes good. He's saltier, grittier on the tongue than Luz. Crowley enjoys the contrast in his mouth with Luz's sweet cream and tide pools. The demon runs his tongue up the side of Zev’s neck, mouthing at his ear, biting and whispering. “I’m going to make you feel really good baby…” The man shudders at his words, arching his neck under Crowley’s mouth.

“Ok, yes, yes, ok.” Zev is panting, his eyes are closed as he gasps out his consent. Crowley’s hands move to his shoulder blades, pushing him forward onto the bed, between Luz’s spread legs. The man is lapping at her pussy instantly, pushing his face insistently into her wetness. Crowley laughs, and Luz reaches her hand to Zev’s chin, lifting him up to look into his eyes, his face shiny and wet. 

“Not yet baby, I want to look at your face.” Luz wipes her thumb across the wetness, smearing her juice into his beard, splitting his mouth open with it, pushing it onto his tongue. Zev groans, opening eagerly as her fingers follow the thumb for a moment, pushing his mouth open, before swiping wetly across his face, over his closed eyes and down into his beard, grinding her scent, her wetness into him. 

Luz looks at Crowley and they share a smile. With her chin, she gestures at the rattan nightstand on the right. “It’s in the drawer”

“Yes ma’am,” Crowley’s brow cocks playfully at the woman, and she can’t restrain a wiggle of delight as she watches him pull the tube of K-Y out of the nightstand. “Oh, fuck.” Luz moans the expletive. Her eyes return to her husband, lowering her mouth to his. They’re kissing when Crowley kneels behind Zev, slipping the fingers of both hands down his round ass and into the dark, furred valley between his cheeks. Zev stiffens, and Luz deepens their kiss. The man relaxes, arching his back to allow Crowley to see the dusk of his opening, surrounded by soft dark hair.

Slippery with the lube, Crowley slides two fingers across Zev’s soft hole. He strokes him, the lube warming as the man’s body grows hotter, his opening spasming slightly, twitching under Crowley’s attentions. He rises to his knees, greasing his cock as he slides it against Zev’s body. The K-Y is slippery against the rougher grip of Zev’s hairs. Crowley is lost to memory for a moment. A huge hairy man, in Gaul was it? They were fucking in a stable, it was so cold the goose fat they had wouldn’t melt. Crowley had held the lump of yellow fat in his mouth until it softened, then he’d licked it into the man’s hole, his cock following easily into the greasy slit. Had he not seen the angel right after, taste of goose fat still in his mouth? It certainly wasn’t the beginning of his desire. He's drawn back to the moment by Luz's voice.

“Are you ready baby?” As she asks him, Luz pulls away from their kiss to look at Zev. He nods, slowly.

Crowley steadies the man with a hand on his low back. He’s covered with hair there too, his body scorching, sweat pooling in the sway of his body. With his other hand, the demon brings his cock to the human’s opening. “Tell him to push back on it, Luz.”

“You hear that baby? Push back on it. Let him in. It’s going to feel so good. Look at me baby.” Zev is pushing back onto Crowley, his body gaping slowly, reluctantly, to let his cock in. Luz grasps his chin and kisses him again, letting him wail into her mouth, catching the sound of it. Crowley exerts himself, pressing gently but steadily into Zev’s body. The man heaves a great sigh into his wife’s kiss, his body relaxes, and Crowley bottoms out, Zev’s sigh becoming a groan, extending into a guttural exhale.

Luz is grasping Zev’s head in her hands, kissing him with total abandon. With every thrust Crowley pushes into him, Zev moans into his wife’s mouth.  
“I want… I want.” Zev is having trouble speaking, but he pulls away from Luz long enough to stammer dazedly.

“I know what you want baby. You can have it. Kiss me. Kiss me down there.” The woman shifts back, reclining on the pillows stacked on the bed. Crowley grips Zev’s hips as the man sinks his face into Luz’s pussy, his tongue stroking open her lips, the abundant hair between her legs sticky and matted under his mouth.

Crowley bends over Zev’s back, stretching his long frame as far up the man’s as he can reach, pressing a kiss between his shoulder blades. As he straightens, he drags his nails along Zev’s back, watching the skin jump and twitch as the man wriggles under the sensation, his hips shifting around Crowley. A soft slap on the ass from the demon stills him.

“Will you come from that?” Crowley asks Luz, looking down to watch Zev sloppily kissing and tonguing her pussy. Crowley can smell it. 

“No, I just want to feel him go nuts when you come in him. Fuck him until you come in him. Then he can fuck me.”

Zev’s head is moving frantically and he’s making a lot of noise, different noises. Luz lays her head back on the pillows with a groan of pleasure. Crowley thrusts once, twice, faster. Zev’s grunts and vibrating cries intensify, and Luz laughs, throatily. “Fuck oh yes, fuck yes yes.”

She keeps saying it, “Fuck yes, yes, oh fuck yes,” and she’s opened her eyes now to watch Crowley thrusting into her husband. 

“Is this what you want?” Crowley is panting a bit as he asks her, he’s fucking into Zev fast, forcefully, he’s getting close to coming.

“Yes, yes oh fuck yes, fuck him yes, I want it I do” Luz pushes her cunt into Zev’s face, he’s squealing and moaning into the split of her, grinding into her with his mouth and his bearded chin. Crowley comes with a long sound, digging his nails into the curve of Zev’s hips, before pulling his cock out wetly, flopping back onto the bed with a grin, watching as Luz extends her arms to pull Zev up her body. Zev’s cock, red and turgid against his belly, sticky with precome, disappears into Luz’s body, her legs wrapping around his waist. He thrusts into her three times, maybe four, before he’s coming, coughing and crying into Luz’s mouth while she strokes his hair, until he’s still.

Crowley is smiling at the two of them in the afterglow, so he sees the look that passes between the human couple. Luz, her legs spread, laid out like a mountainside, lush, fertile, flowing water over verdant passes. Zev, focused on her, his love pouring out from him like a devotee at the foot of the mountain. Crowley feels like he might burst into tears.

He manages not to, and even extricates himself with some grace, he hopes, from their bed and their house. (They later speculate that he was “CIA or whatever it’s called, MI6”.) The cab hurtles along Sunset Boulevard, back to his place in Venice. He can walk along the beach when he gets there, that always helps settle him. 

It’s so loud here, on the jagged edge where North America’s westward thrust meets the Pacific. It’s like being between the plug and the wall socket. The roar of the water’s edge will drown the insistent sound of his unhappiness. Crowley feels numb in the way that tells him he’s missing the angel. The warmth of his anger has dissipated, and when he closes his eyes he sees the curve of his friend’s cheek, the way he looks at Crowley through his lashes, when the demon knows he’s remembering a night passed, or an afternoon.

Sometimes he thinks he’s only half-alive when he’s not with Aziraphale. His friend. Crowley’s steady as a rock 90% of the time. But when that 10% arrives, he can’t fucking function. When his feet go out from under him, he’s down. But Aziraphale… his wobble, his dithering, his uncertain certainty… his constant fretting and guilt, at war with his desires, desires that are just as obvious as his fears. 

When he’s with Aziraphale, Crowley allows himself a wobble of his own, to flirt with dis-ease and indecision. The angel, his constant, his companion for so long. Aziraphale is the place Crowley hangs up his coat, lays down his arms. He hurts Crowley. When the angel’s inner conflicts ignite, shrapnel sprays on both of them. But then they heal, and the scars, tight and silver, hold them together. Was it faith that Crowley had, after all? Faith in the angel, and permission for that faith to be shot with cracks, flawed.

Maybe it's time for a reunion. Crowley is ready to get bicoastal; he’s feeling reckless. He’d met those New York guys a few months ago at that amazing thing with Harry, his ‘Radical Faeries’. He’d hook up with them in Manhattan and have his hands down Aziraphale’s pants in no time. Or something. Maybe Crowley would go ahead and burst into tears. That really would be a thing.

Crowley walks along the sand, the surf faintly phosphorescent with algae. The stars are hard to see, the incandescence of the city staining the sky white even out here against the ocean. But Crowley knows they’re up there. Aziraphale is in New York. All Crowley has to do is go to LAX and this time tomorrow he could be looking at the angel. The surf laps over Crowley’s feet in their leather sandals. He can feel the lube and his own come dried on his skin where it’s bare under his slouchy black cotton trousers. With a hiss of frustration, Crowley kicks off his sandals, shucks his clothes and wades into the water. The waves are cold, and the tiny particles of sand sting his skin, but it feels good. Trails of bioluminescence trace the path of his hands, his legs, in the water. He walks the line of the beach north to Ozone, and he feels a swell of affection for this time, this place, where no one comments as a naked, soaking wet figure with long red hair walks up the tiny street, disappearing through the gate of a small green bungalow, banana trees profuse over the top of its walled garden.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale drowns his sorrows on Fire Island.  
> ************  
> They’d avoided each other after that night with the thermos, a bit. Something was raw. Aziraphale didn’t know if he could bear to see Crowley, to face his own shame when he sees the tightness of the demon’s mouth, the restraint in his limbs. When Crowley stopped into the bookshop with a bottle of absinthe (“Not for now. Enjoy it while I’m gone.”) and told him he’d be flying to Los Angeles (Really? A bit on the nose), the angel realized he couldn’t stand to remain in London if Crowley left. Not that he was following him, of course. But it was time to give his persona a refresh, let the bookshop lie fallow a few decades. Perhaps America would once again have a salubrious effect on the vice around his ribs, his arms and legs weighed down with every movement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enormous thanks to @laurashapiro and [@tyrograph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyrograph/profile) for continued exceptional beta-ing that improves my writing beyond my wildest dreams.
> 
> CW: drug use, drugged sex, possibly dubcon, self-harm, use of terms that some consider slurs
> 
> This story and chapter is heavily influenced by Larry Kramer’s 1978 novel _Faggots_. It’s a very graphic, disturbing and conflicted look at one part of the NY gay scene in the late seventies. I got ahold of this book when I was 16 (I worked in a used bookstore) and it blew. my. mind. It was the explicit, kinky, emotional, symbolic sex scenes, and the neurotic obsessiveness of Kramer’s alter ego, protagonist Fred Lemish. I identified so strongly with Fred and his simultaneous attraction and repulsion with his own sexuality, and I have a lot of that same feeling with Aziraphale. I realized in writing this that my characterization of the angel is definitely influenced by Fred Lemish. If Aziraphale was a New York Jew instead of a posh London C of E er. If you don’t know Larry Kramer, drop everything and watch the HBO Ryan Murphy adaptation of his play _The Normal Heart_ with Marc Ruffalo and Matt Bomer. Well, read this story and then go watch it.
> 
> Song I listened to constantly while writing this: [LAUV, I don’t want to be sad forever](https://open.spotify.com/track/1DVWkJEjgVStgU2EbR9vpz)

_My soul is sick with longing for you, my lover.  
Please God - heal my soul, heal her now._

_Yedid Nefesh/Beloved of My Soul_ , traditional devotional _piyyut_ attributed to Rabbi Elazar Azikri, Tsfat, 1500s.

**The Pines, Fire Island, New York, 1980**

In the decade following the night in the bookshop, Crowley's feet bare and tender in his lap, falling asleep together, waking easily, Aziraphale had tried to strengthen these new spider webs of connection. But it was hard. Crowley didn't move to cross the space between them, and Aziraphale struggled to hold his panic in check. The thermos… he'd done it without thinking, watching himself from outside his body as he’d carefully filled the container with the water, blessed and yet somehow flat, distilled and denatured. It flowed into the thermos like mercury, and he'd screwed the lid shut. He didn't remember how he found himself in the Bentley, listening to the anxious, fearful whine in his voice while he committed his act of bravery. But that was all he'd had in him, wasn't it. Aziraphale had drunk in the sight of Crowley's naked, wanting face, meeting his gift with nothing but acceptance and desire. When the demon had angled his thin frame in his velvet jacket towards Aziraphale, leaning his body into their love, it had been enough to send him running from the car, his cowardice flung behind him.

Aziraphale is afraid of dying. Afraid of pain. The pain of seeing the one he loves in danger. Or wounded. Destroyed. In this way he is like every mortal who has ever been born. His suffering is no more elevated than any of theirs.

They’d avoided each other after that night with the thermos, a bit. Something was raw. Aziraphale didn’t know if he could bear to see Crowley, to face his own shame when he sees the tightness of the demon’s mouth, the restraint in his limbs. When Crowley stopped into the bookshop with a bottle of absinthe (“Not for now. Enjoy it while I’m gone.”) and told him he’d be flying to Los Angeles ( _Really? A bit on the nose_ ), the angel realized he couldn’t stand to remain in London if Crowley left. Not that he was following him, of course. But it was time to give his persona a refresh, let the bookshop lie fallow a few decades. Perhaps America would once again have a salubrious effect on the vice around his ribs, his arms and legs weighed down with every movement.

He’d been in New York a decade now, the comfortable urban familiarity soothing enough that he can enjoy the differences from London . Was there another angel stationed here, watching over the generations burying their stories in the soil, the cobblestones, the pavement? Or an American demon? Upstairs and Downstairs both keep them in the dark about organization structure, so Aziraphale has no idea. He’s the angel of New York City for now, anyway. 

There’s an immediacy to America's bloodshed, the swirls of humans living and dying around him, that somehow feels more available than in London. Not that there isn’t agony to be felt at home, centuries of blood soaking Britain’s soil, mass graves under London, headless bodies in the Tower yard, the ashes of the martyrs long since spread over fields, the shriveled bodies curled in foetal position underneath the peat. And the imperial evils overseas, their spoils fertilizing Britain, the bodies buried on other shores. But that agony is his, somehow, or he’s learned to move around it, through it, acknowledge it and still walk, in the centuries, millenia past.

He’s out of Manhattan now, along with what seems to be all of the city’s “bachelors”. He flinches a little at the words he hears in the city, but can’t deny he’s inspired by the angry, lustful irreverence of the men he’s known there, calling each other faggot and bitch and Mary, while they fuck each other silly in dark corners of bars, piers, shipping containers, anywhere they can press up against each other, into each other. A lid has been unscrewed and thrown off and centuries of desire are gushing out, drenching the city. And here, that flood meets the sea on the beaches of Fire Island.

Aziraphale’s bare feet pad along the wet sand at the water’s edge, small swells sweeping up as high as his ankles if he doesn’t trot out of the way. He’s wearing a white linen suit, with a matching waistcoat, trouser cuffs rolled half-way up his thick calves. He’s aware he looks out of place amongst the throngs of naked men who litter the beaches and patios of The Pines. But there’s ample room for eccentricity here. And, as it turns out, a not insignificant number of men who are quite interested in having an older gentleman in a suit put them through their paces.

Aziraphale has developed a reputation as a skillful lover, and also as something harder to describe. Two friends might be lying on the beach, sharing a joint and looking at the stars. “I just felt so good after. It was weird. Do you know what I mean?” “Yes, I know exactly what you mean!”

Aziraphale walks along the edge of the continent. He’s thinking about Crowley. Crowley at the opposite end of this huge country. He wanted to get away from Aziraphale, and the angel can’t blame him. He’d followed, piteously, but too cowardly to actually go to his friend. Why couldn’t he be brave like Crowley? He didn’t deserve the demon’s love, his faithfulness. It was right that Crowley leave him. He could never expiate his sins against his friend. But he can at least give some meaning to his miserable, eternal existence, easing the suffering of the humans he touches.

As the sun sinks behind the trees, Aziraphale walks up the beach, slips his canvas espadrilles on his damp feet, and wanders into the woods.

He comes across all kinds when he cruises. He’s done it a few times in the city too, but it tends to be a bit more unsavoury in terms of location. It’s so lovely out here, the country getaway, that it’s not really squalid, it’s just a bit of fun au plein aire. He has encounters with men who are filled with hatred and shame, the knots in their spirits as tangible to the angel as their bodies, their skin under his hands. He does what he can, to give himself into them, to open the shut places, mend the broken. And he meets men who move with him in exuberant joy, the shimmers in their meridians humming in harmony with the angel’s. Perhaps they are lovers of lovers of lovers to some man Aziraphale lay with earlier in the century. Or perhaps they unlocked the doors, threw open the cells with a friend of their own.

It’s a full moon tonight, and it will be busy in the woods. Aziraphale feels the certain constriction in his chest that he now associates with thoughts of Crowley. Not the golden bubbles of former days. Every step he’s taken towards his friend has pushed them apart, every approach followed by a retreat. A hot cramp of longing and shame in his sternum startles him into missing his footing on the sandy path, but he catches himself before he falls. No matter. There’s golden lights aplenty when he’s fucking strangers in the woods.

Not far into the shelter of the trees, Aziraphale meets a slender young man with shoulder length hair, dirty blonde. There’s a bow and a curtsy, an ask and an answer. The angel holds him firmly against the smooth bark of a large birch tree on the edge of the clearing they’ve stopped in. The moonlight has washed everything to blue and grey. He begins to undo the boy’s jeans to free his hardening cock, but the young man begs Aziraphale to fuck him, twisting in the angel’s hands. Aziraphale stops his pleading with a kiss. The kiss goes on for a long moment, Aziraphale exerting his presence over the body trapped between his bulk and the unyielding tree. After a few more moments, Aziraphale buzzing quietly into his mouth, the human yields into his hands. The angel turns him, pressing the boy’s jaw into the tree with his own implacable cheek.

Aziraphale begins to float into the boy - Richard is his name. “My friends call me Dick,” he’d whispered sybillantly, disarming the angel with his unapologetic effeminacy. Aziraphale liked that. It added an effervescence to the encounter that the angel has developed a taste for. He thinks of Crowley, the cock of hips, the sway of back, long, delicate fingers. He opens his mouth into Richard, chasing his lisping tongue. Unzipping his fly, Aziraphale ruts his hardness into the welcome of the boy’s bare backside after Richard kicks his bluejeans off his feet.

Soon enough, Aziraphale’s greased cock is sliding in, the angel is in the man at the root and racing through his vessels to reach every part of him. He’s beautiful, and his physical and energetic beings are loose and open. There’s some scarring too, his mother’s rejection, shot through with gold where he’s grown around it. Aziraphale only meddles a little, softening, dimming. He closes his eyes as he fucks the warm, moaning man in a steady rhythm. 

Aziraphale long ago lost count of the men he’s allowed himself to have. In the beginning, it took focus, a deliberate, conscious descent into his partner, but it’s different now. It’s easier to do it, the healing, but his worldly awareness dims as he lets his body’s instincts take over, sinking into the soothing, numbing warmth of their shared pleasure and the needs of the human soul he’s entangling with.

Richard is starting to gasp in a higher pitch, drawing the angel’s attention back to the present moment and the grove where he’s fucking someone against a birch tree. The boy is reaching the limits of his body’s receptivity. If this goes on much longer it will start to hurt, and Aziraphale doesn’t like that, at least not… not in this context. The angel draws the boy’s hand down to his cock (“my friends call me Dick”) and they stroke him together, Aziraphale bracing his thick arms so the man isn’t crushed against the tree. Aziraphale indulges himself as Dick comes into their entwined hands, gripping the boy by his softening cock and shifting a hand to his throat, holding him bowed against the angel’s broad chest.. He pushes in to his full length, spilling inside the boy with a moan. He releases the last restraint on his energies, flooding both of them with the sparkling mist of dissipating angelic glory.

Dick is kissing him sloppily, slumped against the tree. “Thank you sir, thank you so much.”  
“Now my dear boy, none of that.” Even Aziraphale isn’t sure how much of his affect is affectation at this point. His response does appear to provoke Dick, who throws his arms tighter around the angel, kissing him with little biting growls.

“What have you got here Dick?” It’s a new voice, and it’s very close. You’re never alone in the woods here, but this is not just a passerby or polite voyeur. Aziraphale opens his eyes, pulling his mouth from Richard’s. A man with large, dark rimmed eyes stands at Richard’s shoulder. He’s wearing a loose tank top that shows his ribs, visible under his smooth skin, and very brief shorts, keds. He’s looking at the angel with hunger. He’s in pain, a lot of pain, Aziraphale can feel it without even touching him. “Hullo Rabbit,” says Dick. The dark-eyed man - _Rabbit_ \- drapes a thin arm over his friend, raising an eyebrow inquiringly.

“Help yourself to whatever he’s got left - I need a fucking breather.” Richard pulls away from the angel, tugging on his jeans before slumping onto the ground, his back against the tree. He pulls a cigarette and a lighter from somewhere. “I’ll watch. You know what they say; if you can’t stir the batter, you can always lick the bowl” He grins, lighting his smoke and taking a drag with a laugh.

Aziraphale is feeling a bit befuddled, still floating from his orgasm, the climax of his connection with Richard. Rabbit is already pushing against his body, twining arms around his neck, his mouth seeking the angel’s. Aziraphale is off-balance and falling headfirst into the boy. There is so much pain, self-loathing, Aziraphale sees flashes of scripture, and tears start in his eyes. He doesn’t resist, lets it all in, feeling it all. Rabbit is humming, kissing the rough scratch of his jaw, up to his ear. His noises deepen with surprise when he feels Aziraphale’s hardening cock pressing against his bare belly. Rabbit’s forcing his fingers into the tight pocket of his shorts, he brings something up to Aziraphale’s face, there’s a rush of scent. The angel feels every portal go slack, blowing him open to Rabbit, still in front of him. And he can feel the other men, humans in the woods around them, as swirls of colour, flashes of experience, emotion, change and decay. Dimly he’s aware that he’s sliding his cock into Rabbit, but isn’t sure if his arms are around the man or not. Aziraphale can’t tell where he ends and the other begins. He feels hands circling his belly from behind, a mouth kissing his spine, worshipfully.

It becomes a bit of an urban legend, for a few months anyway. He didn’t fuck 20 men, but it was a lot, and he can’t remember them all. There are flashes, partners where the flavour of a spirit was strong enough to force him into the present, differentiate himself from the cloud of molecules he’s disintegrating into as the night wears on.

Eventually, even angelic grace reaches its capacity. The unserved drift away, and Aziraphale is laid under the birch tree, his head in Rabbit’s lap, his feet in Dick’s. Rabbit strokes his forehead, observes his slow breathing. Aziraphale feels his fingers, his concern. But it’s not as loud. His pores are finally closing, finally lowering the sluice gates his whole being had poured out of. He’s an empty husk, dry cracked earth under a cold dawn. As the first pale yellow streaks hit the forest, Crowley finds the angel there beneath the tree, in the arms of his attendants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm [@lavraiemonchichi](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lavraiemonchichi) on Tumblr.  
> (and yes, I increased the chapter count. I ended up splitting the next chapter into 2 parts. Chapter 3 is being betad rn)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley finds Aziraphale incapacitated.
> 
> ***********  
> They make it to the bed, Crowley carrying almost all his weight in the end, the angel collapsing onto the mattress as soon as the backs of his thighs hit the metal frame. Crowley kneels, slipping off the angel’s slightly tattered canvas and sisal shoes, before lifting his legs onto the bed, squeezing each thick calf slightly before letting go. Crowley looks down at Aziraphale. The angel is curled on his side, back to Crowley. His eyes are closed and his head looks like it’s sinking into the pillow, incredibly heavy. His skin is greyish and his hair looks dull and rough. Crowley extends a hand, brushing the back of his knuckles softly over the angel’s temple. The skin is cool and dry. Crowley’s heart spasms in his chest, a dry cramp of anguish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some tender loving care...
> 
> CW: HIV/AIDS, the problem of evil, and content in tags
> 
> Enormous thanks to [laurashapiro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurashapiro/) and [ tyrograph ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyrograph) for expert and empathic beta-ing that improve my stories immensely.
> 
> This one goes out to all the empaths. I feel you.
> 
> Song I listened to nonstop while writing: [Rüfüs del Sol, Underwater](https://open.spotify.com/track/04QZdz4g1qoDlPscXVXS1I)

“Apocalypse is now a long-running serial: not “Apocalypse Now” but “Apocalypse From Now On.”  
― Susan Sontag, _Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors_

Dick and Rabbit watch the slender figure walk purposefully towards their bower. His close cut jeans, so dark blue they’re black in the dawn light, are cuffed above slightly scuffed Doc Martens, laces running up to mid-shin. His long sleeve black t-shirt is imprinted with a faded image of a head in a gask mask, ‘Black Sabbath’ legible above. The dulled red of his hair curls softly in the morning humidity this close to the shore, brushing his shoulders. The visitor crosses the clearing swiftly, crouching down at Aziraphale’s head in a fluid movement. The two boys exchange looks as he places a palm flat on the chest of the still figure between them. The branches of the trees move slightly in the wind off the ocean, pale green leaves reflected in the mirrored lenses of his glasses.

“You've done yourself an injury, angel.”

“Oh, Crowley ... you’ve come.” Aziraphale’s voice is a harsh whisper, sand sliding across glass.

“Of course I’ve come. Can you tell me where you’re staying?” He turns to Rabbit and Dick, who are staring, mesmerized. “Help me get him up, boys.” Crowley’s effortless domination of the scene has the two men on their feet in a moment.

With some struggle, they lift Aziraphale to his feet, hanging dazed and dessicated between them. His eyes try to focus on Crowley standing in front of him.

“Crowley, I’m, I’m fine.” He lets out a long, hitching exhale. “ I mean, er, I’m not fine actually.” The angel’s face tries to twist up in his customary expression of apologetic, compulsive honesty, but the muscles in his face don’t seem to respond. His eyes close. “I’m just up the shore, upstairs at the blue house.” He gives a shallow breath that seems to express the finality of his words, he’s used them all. He is silent.

“All right lads, let’s help him home, shall we?” The two young men obediently link arms across Aziraphale’s back, and begin guiding him up the path back to the boardwalk.

________

As they reach the stairs of the blue house, weathered boards bleached by sea spray, the group halts. They are hardly the most unusual assemblage stumbling home as the sun rises fully from the ocean.

“Alright boys, that’s good of you. I’ll take him from here.” Crowley is feeling his way back into his East Coast self. He’ll save the California attitude for upstairs with Aziraphale. He wants to be alone with the angel so badly it feels like he’s biting metal.

Dick and Rabbit blink as though they’re waking up. As they slide their hands out from under Aziraphale’s jacket, away from his body, Rabbit leans in and presses his lips to the angel’s cheek. Dick follows suit, leaving a soft kiss on Aziraphale before yielding his spot to Crowley, who watches impassively as the men take their last blessing from the angel. He resists the urge to drag Aziraphale up the stairs to the solitude of the flat. As the boys drift off down the path, Crowley slips his shoulder further under Aziraphale’s limp arm, pressing the sides of their bodies together. He pulls the angel into him, taking as much of his weight as he can without just picking him up. Which he’s considering doing anyway. But Aziraphale stumbles up the salt-scoured white steps to the door of the upstairs apartment. 

“It’s locked, angel.” Crowley rattles the doorknob again anyway.

“Flower pot,” breathes Aziraphale, his chin pointing imperceptibly to the deep-silled window next to the door. A terracotta pot overflows with orange nasturtiums. It’s sitting askew, and Crowley reaches to pull the key out from under it, before opening the door, easing them both inside in one motion.

Crowley, half-dragging the angel, shoulders open the one closed door off the small hallway, correctly predicting the location of the bedroom. The risen sun streams through the large window’s sheer curtains, illuminating an old metal bedstead, made up with white linens, a wardrobe in the corner. A small stack of books on the white wicker nightstand. The usual Brontë. Woolf. Arendt it looks like, Eichmann in Jerusalem[1]. Christ, that’s not good. Slippers on the blue latch hook rug at the side of the bed.

They make it to the bed, Crowley carrying almost all his weight in the end, the angel collapsing onto the mattress as soon as the backs of his thighs hit the metal frame. Crowley kneels, slipping off the angel’s slightly tattered canvas and sisal shoes, before lifting his legs onto the bed, squeezing each thick calf slightly before letting go. Crowley looks down at Aziraphale. The angel is curled on his side, back to Crowley. His eyes are closed and his head looks like it’s sinking into the pillow, incredibly heavy. His skin is greyish and his hair looks dull and rough. Crowley extends a hand, brushing the back of his knuckles softly over the angel’s temple. The skin is cool and dry. Crowley’s heart spasms in his chest, a dry cramp of anguish.

Crowley folds to unlace his boots, which takes a full minute and a half, but then he’s pulling them off and curling himself behind the angel on the bed, like they’re one creature, a pearlescent nautilus of curves within curves.

Aziraphale doesn’t seem to acknowledge the demon’s presence, but after a moment he speaks, his voice weak, tinder-dry brush ready to ignite. “Something is happening and I, I can’t stop it.” He pauses for so long Crowley wonders if he will say anything more. 

”It’s always been like this, since the flood, since Eden… I know, I should know better now, but oh, Crowley.”

Oh angel. His tender, suffering friend. He’s blasted open like a stripmined hillside, a meek and bleeding piece of earth. Aziraphale is a being of love, not like the rest of the angels, those judgy pricks. Crowley is suddenly overwhelmed with sentiment, weak with it. He knows the angel will hear it in his voice.

“Angel, you can't, you can't stop it. They are going to suffer and die. After 6,000 years you do know, you know that. There's no fairness, the scales are broken, and you can't balance them with your body. No matter how hard you try.”

The angel lies taut and miserable on the bed. With a soft sound, Crowley wraps him in his arms. Aziraphale’s linen shirt has a loose neckline, and Crowley presses his forehead against the back of the pale, blotchy neck, soft with fine silver hairs.

“What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be like you?”

"You don't have to be like me. There's nothing wrong with you." Crowley’s wiry arms lace around him, tucking their bodies closer together. Crowley opens his hands against Aziraphale, tightening his hold for a breath, two breaths.

“You, you shouldn’t. I can’t. I can never, it’s not fair…” Aziraphale stumbles, his voice still barely a whisper.

“I just told you there’s no fairness, angel. And I think I qualify as a consenting adult in any jurisdiction you’d care to try.” 

Crowley snakes his arms more firmly around Aziraphale’s chest, giving his ribs a possessive squeeze. Lips closed, he kisses the angel’s neck. In a rush, Crowley feels again everything he’d buried after that night in the Bentley. Everything that was _too fast_. Seeds and spores, deep in the melting permafrost, are now germinating in the sun’s rays, leaves bursting out of their buds. He wants to throw himself on Aziraphale, lavish him with millennia of suppressed affection. To kiss him, to feed him, to soothe him. The tenderness that washes over him is almost painful, hot needles in his chest, in the soles of his feet. He squeezes the angel again, this time opening his mouth against Aziraphale’s neck with a wet growl. He feels Aziraphale tense under his mouth, then relax back into him with a sigh. Crowley closes his eyes, pressing his cheek against Aziraphale’s hair, holding their bodies flush to each other. He lets the angel’s scent fill his nose, the warmth of him pressed against Crowley’s hungry frame. The weighty curve of his ass against the demon’s crotch.

When was the last time he’d measured his length against the angel? Paris, earlier this century? They’d been standing. He remembered the greedy push of Aziraphale’s body against him. He’d lain on a bed against Aziraphale’s side on the ship that brought them to America, last century, slept the night with his arm draped across the angel’s broad chest. Here on this white bed, Crowley holds Aziraphale in his arms, face pressed against his neck. Crowley’s eyes roll back slightly beneath his closed lids.

“I can’t…. I can’t go through it alone, Crowley. I can’t.” Aziraphale’s voice is a little stronger, cracking.

“I know, angel. You’re not alone. I’m with you.” Crowley matches the angel’s timbre, hissing the words into Aziraphale’s skin, letting his lips trace the sentence on his nape.

With an exhale, Crowley sinks a few layers into Aziraphale. He’s so weak, open. Crowley can’t be sure if the angel is even aware of his presence. Green, silver, black, the motes of Crowley’s power softly drift into Aziraphale, to just beneath his skin. Crowley keeps his awareness light, the trickle of energy soaking slowly in. Time seems suspended, but the sun has come close to its zenith, pouring through the window onto Crowley’s back, when he feels Aziraphale’s skin warming, his breathing becoming deeper, more regular.

Crowley runs a hand down the angel’s front, curving his palm over the rounds of Aziraphale’s body. Crowley can feel the spring of his hair through the fine mesh of his shirt, the thick mat on his chest trailing down his stomach into his trousers.

“Are you hungry, angel? Thirsty?” Crowley resists the urge to pat Aziraphale’s warm, solid belly.

“You know, I believe I am, my dear. I’m feeling quite a bit more myself as it happens.” 

“Yes, well let’s get you some, er, fluids.” Crowley is suddenly shy, his confident hold on the angel faltering as he sits up on the bed, their bodies a little apart.

“Tea?” says Aziraphale, wanly.

“Yes!” Crowley rises from the bed awkwardly, legs folding and straightening to bring him upright, the wood floor smooth beneath his stocking feet. “I’ll fix it.” He’s out of the bedroom in a few long strides, crossing the hall to the galley kitchen off the sitting room. The demon braces his hands on either side of the sink, looking down at the distorted, vaguely man-shaped blur reflected in the stainless steel. He’s afraid. Afraid that the snap is coming, the detonation. It’s happened so many times that he’s having a pavlovian response to his own feelings. Cringing like a dog about to be hit is more like it.

Settle the corporation to settle the soul - Crowley takes some even breaths. It usually helps, and this time is no different. With a convulsive shake that seems to undulate up his spine, Crowley huffs loudly and looks around for a kettle. There is none.

“Angel, there’s no kettle!” He shouts it from the bedroom door. Will Aziraphale be strong enough to shout back?

“Oh, I know; I boil water in a pot, there’s tea in the cupboard.” It’s not a shout but he can hear the angel, his voice is clear and steadier.

Grumbling, Crowley makes a rough simulacrum of tea, arranging it and a few other items on an enamel tray dug out of the cabinet. It’s yellow, with a huge, poorly drawn pink peony in the center. He balances it on the mattress in front of the angel, sitting himself carefully by his legs.

He always brings Aziraphale something to eat from his travels, no matter how long or short his absence, and he’d made the cab stop at his favourite health food store on Abbot Kinney before LAX. “I brought you some fresh almonds, and an avocado” Crowley offers up a plate from the tray, creamy green wedges of avocado with the almonds poured over top, the white of their flesh showing where the kernels have split in half.

“That looks wonderful.” Aziraphales’ eyes travel from the plate up to meet Crowley’s. They drink each other in, unhurried. “Tea?” asks the angel at last.

Crowley pours the tea into the mug he’d taken from one of the tiny brass hooks under the cabinet. It hits the milk at the bottom, swirling together to an even light brick colour. The angel takes it, hitching himself up on one elbow to bring the mug to his mouth. Crowley settles the teapot on the end table, and takes the mug from the angel’s hands when he’s had a few sips.

Crowley picks up an avocado wedge in his long fingers. With his thumbs he pops the skin, the soft heavy flesh of the fruit trembling slightly on the pith, waiting. Sometimes Crowley has watched while the angel has eaten a gift in front of him. Not infrequently it’s been tucked away in Aziraphale’s desk for another time. The angel knows better than to offer to share anything with Crowley. But they’ve not passed through this doorway, never extended the gift this far. Crowley separates the piece from the last cling of its peel, and brings it towards the angel. The demon is moving slowly, watching. Aziraphale’s eyes are on his, before they drop to the fruit about to touch his own lips. He opens his mouth and Crowley slips the avocado onto his tongue.The pad of his thumb catches on the angel’s bottom lip, pulling it slightly to reveal the silky wet pink insides of his mouth, before Crowley releases it.

After the angel eats another soft green wedge from Crowley’s fingertips, the demon slips a golden almond between his lips and Aziraphale chews it, making the smallest moan of delight, a vibration in his throat that thrills Crowley beyond all reason. More almonds, another avocado slice, sip of tea. The angel’s face looks ruddy and content, but his head is sagging down onto the pillow. Crowley puts the tray aside, and sits next to Aziraphale, his toes touching the floor beneath the bed. The angel has his eyes closed, but he turns his face towards Crowley, who comes to a decision.

“Do you think you can sleep, angel?” Would you sleep here with me? 

Aziraphale mumbles something that might be assent.

“Angel, I think you should sleep. Let me help you.” 

Crowley’s hands go to Aziraphale’s linen jacket, pulling it off his shoulders. Aziraphale lets him, rolling slightly so Crowley can remove it. Then Crowley is unbuttoning his waistcoat, pushing it off. He has to press his body against Aziraphale, chest to chest, to slide his hands under him, and slip the clothing off. He folds the waistcoat rather carelessly before laying it on top of the jacket, on the floor. He’ll deal with that later. Crowley feels a bit flushed, but well, that’s to be expected. Aziraphale’s a bit rosy too, but that’s good, it’s a glow of health, isn’t it. Crowley leans back over the angel, pulling the white coverlet out from under and up over his body, curled in on himself again. But his spine is relaxed, his face serene rather than slack and lifeless. The shadows through the window are long now as the sun has begun to set. Time has been elongating and compressing effortlessly all day in this white room. Crowley skins out of his socks and clothes and slips under the covers in his black briefs.

There’s a moment of hesitation so brief it’s almost imperceptible, and then he’s wrapping himself against Aziraphale’s back once more, pulling him into the circle of his arms, tilting his hips slightly so his thigh is pressing down on the angel’s, they’re touching along the whole lengths of their bodies. Aziraphale sinks back into Crowley like a stone slipping under the surface of a lake. The angel tilts his head up and into the pillow, inviting. With a groan, Crowley rubs his cheek against Aziraphale’s, nuzzling behind his ear, kissing his offered neck. He rubs their cheeks again and again, the angel’s scratchy stubble a delicious sting against Crowley’s smooth face.

Eventually, Crowley slows his kisses, his rubbing and nosing at Aziraphale’s face, his hair, his neck, kissing the pink curve of his ear, Aziraphale sighing sleepily under him. Resting against the firm bulk of Aziraphale’s rear, warm through the thin linen of his trousers, Crowley can feel himself hardening, heartbeat pulsing between his legs. He lets himself marinate in his arousal, his want so patent with this effort. There’s nothing to be done but acknowledge it. Breathing in sync with the angel, lips pressed against his temple. He lets his desire fuel the tiny tendrils of his energies, wrapping Aziraphale in a sparkling shroud. 

Aziraphale sleeps, Crowley twined around him. Colours blaze in Crowley’s mind as he feels Aziraphale’s ribs expand and contract beneath his arms. Crowley will always wait for him, come back to him. His devotion, whether from near or far, is almost instinctive, and he rarely allows himself to examine it. His mind lingers instead on each centimeter of skin where they are pressed together. This bit of cheek. The skin of his inner arm, against Aziraphale’s throat where the collar of his shirt parts. Their chests rise and fall in the same rhythm. Through the window, voices drift in, a deep rumble, followed by laughter, as the new night settles over the island. Crowley follows the angel into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a 1963 book by political theorist Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power, reported on Adolf Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker...  
> ...Arendt's subtitle famously introduced the phrase "the banality of evil". In part the phrase refers to Eichmann's deportment at the trial as the man displayed neither guilt for his actions nor hatred for those trying him, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply "doing his job" ("He did his ‘duty'...; he not only obeyed 'orders', he also obeyed the 'law'."p. 135). (Wikipedia) return to text


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's morning in The Pines.
> 
> "Aziraphale opens his eyes. Everything is dark, a jumble of indistinct shapes. Blinking, he slowly places himself, in the room, on the bed. And it’s Crowley flush against him, the demon’s warm exhales against the back of his neck, smell of earth and spice seeping into every breath Aziraphale takes.
> 
> Those breaths draw in the mingled scents of Crowley, of his own body, miracled clean but warm and yeasty from sleep, of the ocean through the window. Aziraphale breathes in deeper, his chest expanding against Crowley's embrace. His lungs are eager for the vitality of the air. All the traces of the men last night, physical and otherwise, are faded shadows. The memories of it feel softened, resolved."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this took a few months, which is definitely not what I planned. Here's six thousand words of what me, Crowley and Aziraphale have been waiting for.
> 
> No words really, to thank Laura Shapiro for fearlessly strapping on waders and getting your skillful hands into the muck of my subconscious, this wouldn't have been given to light without you. And Tyrograph, your edits, insights and breathless capslocked comments are everything.
> 
> I can't express my appreciation and gratitude for all of you who have commented on the stories I've written, to the incredible creators in this fandom, and to the tea-klatch that is the slow show support group. Tea references in this story are for you. 
> 
> I think there will be one more chapter in this series....
> 
> Love,  
> Slattern/[la vraie monchichi ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lavraiemonchichi)

_“There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.” ― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères_

Song of the chapter: [Ra Ma Da Sa, Amanbir Singh ](https://open.spotify.com/track/6KRlpincRyrRf7cT4kf1jn)1

\-------------

Aziraphale opens his eyes. Everything is dark, a jumble of indistinct shapes. Blinking, he slowly places himself, in the room, on the bed. And it’s Crowley flush against him, the demon’s warm exhales against the back of his neck, smell of earth and spice seeping into every breath Aziraphale takes.

Those breaths draw in the mingled scents of Crowley, of his own body, miracled clean but warm and yeasty from sleep, of the ocean through the window. Aziraphale breathes in deeper, his chest expanding against Crowley's embrace. His lungs are eager for the vitality of the air. All the traces of the men last night, physical and otherwise, are faded shadows. The memories of it feel softened, resolved.

Crowley has curled himself around Aziraphale, his head tucked in between his nape and the pillow, one long arm wrapping up against his collarbone, the other wound around his ribs. Gathering Crowley’s arms around him, Aziraphale pulls the embrace deeper, nosing the bicep hooked under his chin, rubbing it. He can feel the warmth of Crowley’s skin, the spring of the firm muscles in his slender arms. Aziraphale chases the musk of cinnamon and fresh-turned earth, turning in their embrace to tuck his face into the dark scented cave of Crowley's body under his arm.

Aziraphale can feel the tickle of Crowley’s hair, downy soft on his lips. He’s drunk from sleep, from his own exhalations, from the scents of Crowley, stronger than he’s ever let himself have. He opens his mouth against Crowley’s skin, hot and damp with the demon’s sweat and Aziraphale’s moist breath. As he breathes in, tasting Crowley’s spice over his tongue, Aziraphale can’t help tightening his arm around the demon’s chest, hungry.

Breath coming faster as he wakes, Crowley pulls his own arms close around Aziraphale, drawing him up until his head is cradled against the demon’s shoulder. Crowley’s narrow pupils focus on Aziraphale, holding his eyes, even as he lifts a hand to the angel’s chin. 

For all that he feels Crowley's hand will surely scald his face at its touch, the fingers and palm are cool and dry as they cradle Aziraphale's chin, curve around his cheek. Aziraphale is ready, he knows it, allows it. He's going to allow it to happen. The membrane between them has grown impossibly thin, oceans held back by translucent millimeters. Crowley is going to pierce it. And he does; mouth against Aziraphale's, finally, finally, they are there, one breath at a joined mouth, wet, gentle.

Crowley turns into the kiss, rolling Aziraphale until he’s flat on his back under that serpentine weight. The bed is ocean waves. The rhythm of surf under him feels as natural as the blazing heat of Crowley above. He lets the waves rock him up into that warmth, feels his hungry skin soaking it in, every touch, every gasp, each slip of wetness as Crowley’s mouth opens against his. He was made for this, this passive, restorative consumption. Or perhaps he’s been remade for it, Aziraphale thinks, pressing up into Crowley’s body, into his kiss, after a thousand years of struggle it’s suddenly easy. Crowley is gentle on him, lips and tongue soft waves curling up to caress the sand, humming into the receptive warmth of Aziraphale’s mouth.

When the demon pulls away from him, it takes Aziraphale a moment to open his eyes, his mind unfocused with desire. Crowley is looking down at him, an earnest expression sitting rather strangely on his face, still lined with sleep. 

“I meant - I meant what I said. That it doesn’t have to be fair. I don’t, I don’t expect that, I don’t need any… vows.” The demon speaks without inflection, withholding his charm. Well, as much as is possible for him to withhold. 

There’s a chamber in Aziraphale’s heart that has never been entered. Dimly, he senses that God placed it there in creating him, but it does not belong to Heaven. Crowley’s yellow eyes are soft as he lays down his words, his air of cool self-sufficiency held out as a gift. Aziraphale imagines the outline of a door, wood and iron under his hands, senses the room beyond it, vast and empty, a faint shadow of incense. His eyes blur.

“What _do_ you need then, my darling?”

Crowley sits back on his elbow, the shock of the question seeming to move him physically. Aziraphale could see him thinking. It’s rare for him to surprise the demon, and Aziraphale spares a moment to enjoy it while Crowley’s face works, mouth shaping sounds before he speaks.

“I need… I need you to be open to possibilities. All kinds of possibilities.” Crowley’s gaze darts to either side of Aziraphale, before landing on his face, holding his eyes with yellow ones, pupils wide and black in the predawn.

“What does that mean?” Aziraphale’s mouth is dry. He usually drinks some water after sleeping, if he sleeps. Should he reach past Crowley to his glass? What possibilities? What possible possibilities?

“I mean, to be open to different ways of seeing things. Listen, you don’t.. You don’t have to agree to anything. It’s just… when it comes up, maybe you’ll remember this and be… open.”

Aziraphale knows that Crowley has changed him, changes him. That he does things now he never would have a thousand years ago, and it is down to the demon’s influence. But in this dark room and warm bed, the sounds of the surf come up from the shore to roar softly around the two of them, and Aziraphale silently concedes that he _wants_ to be changed. _Oh Crowley_ ; the angularity of that beloved face, softened by the darkness, the boyish tilt of his head, the tense vibration in his small muscles where their bodies are touching. Outside the confines of the room, Aziraphale’s wings rustle. His mouth opens.

“Yes. Crowley, yes.”

“Oh. Angel.” The tension flows out of Crowley in a rush, he’s slithering over Aziraphale’s chest, twining their fingers together and drawing his wrists above the pillow their heads rest on, pinning him. 

“Oh angel, I want you.” Crowley’s voice is a whisper, a gravel of sleep still rough in the back of his throat. Without lessening the pressure holding him fast to the bed, Crowley slips one hand under Aziraphale’s head. Long fingers cradle his skull, fingertips bringing their faces together. He’s speaking into the space between the bed and Aziraphale’s ear. “I’m not going to wait any more.”

“I don’t want you to wait. I’m not going to make you wait any more.” Aziraphale wants to put his arms around Crowley, run his fingers through his hair. He struggles for a moment against Crowley’s grip, flexing the strength of his arms against it, before surrendering against the sheets. Crowley follows him down with a kiss, soft and overwhelming against his mouth. He feels the drag of Crowley’s hardness, once, up the side of his hip and back down. Crowley’s tongue slips into Aziraphale’s mouth, his grip tightening on the angel’s wrists, holding him in place under his mouth, and it’s good, it’s so good.

“I’m going to take care of you, angel.” Crowley draws back for a breath, whispering into Aziraphale’s parted lips. “I’m going to do everything I want to you, I’m going to take such good care of you.” Crowley chokes slightly on the last word, closing his eyes and rutting against Aziraphale’s body for two, three thrusts. Aziraphale groans and presses back against him, trying to twist his own hardening cock into contact with Crowley. He’s adrift in pleasure, the words in his mind uncharacteristically and thoroughly stilled. He only wants - wants Crowley, wants his mouth, wants his body against his own, wants him everywhere. 

His weakness the night before. Crowley’s care, so deft, giving Aziraphale everything he couldn’t ask for. He’d always thought of Crowley as his friend, his only friend. He’s acknowledged their love, their _romance_. But now… the layers between them have dissolved, the way an ancient manuscript might come apart under his gloved hands. Aziraphale sees it behind his closed lids. Illuminated entries on six thousand pages. The secret language of tenderness. The flushed anguish of desire. An old story disappeared into dust, the new one in its place a ream of creamy vellum, unwritten and unbound. He feels so close to Crowley that the demon’s in-breaths seem to fill Aziraphale’s lungs. The throb in Crowley’s throat is pulsing in the angel’s heart.

Blessedly, Crowley slides on top of him, _finally_. Aziraphale pushes up into Crowley, seeking, and they meet through the friction of fabric. They moan into each other's mouths at the contact. With each peak of pleasure, Aziraphale feels himself in Crowley, they’re drifting into each other through every pore of skin where Crowley’s body above him presses them together. He’s felt this before, they’ve had it, in flashes. But this is a steady burning beam, and the exchange is overwhelming. Crowley, penetrating into him, layer after layer down from the surface of Aziraphale’s pale skin, filling him, holding him open to get deeper, golden rays streaking through the soft green of leaves. With each surge of sensation, Aziraphale feels the pulse of their connection, drawn into his lover’s chest with each breath. 

“Darling, please…” He must have Crowley closer, deeper, more. Twisting in that firm grip, he can feel a smile against his lips where their mouths meet. The demon sits up on his knees, taking the magnetic heat of his arousal out of Aziraphale’s touch.

“Open your eyes, angel.”

Aziraphale does it. There is nothing to see but Crowley, eclipsing the angel’s field of vision. “I’m going to make you tell me what you want, angel. You’re going to have to look at me and tell me what you want.”

“Oh, yes, yes Crowley.” Aziraphale is nodding, small movements of his head so as not to break eye contact. 

“I’m going to touch you now, Aziraphale.” The use of his name instead of ‘angel’ sends a shiver of arousal? Fear? through his body and his back arches as his eyes close. It’s arousal, mostly. He doesn’t care. He’s never felt this _here_ in his whole existence. There’s nothing beyond this endless present moment. With a ragged exhale he opens his eyes to Crowley’s expectant look. 

“Yes, please touch me, Crowley.”

“You want that? You want this?” Crowley strokes the inside of Aziraphale’s pinned wrist with his slender index finger. Sensation shoots up Aziraphale’s arm, hot, restless. He squirms.

“Yes, I do, I want this.”

“You want me.” 

Crowley’s tone, tight and controlled, thickens Aziraphale’s throat with sentiment, and he chokes slightly as he answers.

“Oh, my darling, I do, I want you so much.” His last word is swallowed up in Crowley’s kiss, pressing Aziraphale back into the mattress with the force of it. The kiss goes on for a while, slippery, loose, until Crowley slowly drags his wet lips along Aziraphale’s face to his ear, which he kisses softly, tracing the curve of it with his tongue. Aziraphale shivers, feeling all the hairs on his body standing, feeling every bit of him that is against Crowley.

“I’m going to touch every part of you that I can, and then I’m going to take your clothes off and touch the rest of you.” Crowley is whispering warmly into his ear, and Aziraphale rolls his shoulders in helpless pleasure. Crowley strokes his wrist again. This time he’s using the back of his hand, the small calluses on his knuckles exquisite against Aziraphale’s skin. He shifts his grip on Aziraphale’s hands where he holds him against the bed. The new angle forces a slight stretch along his side, curved up into Crowley’s stroking fingers, a gape of pale belly where his shirt is pulled away from his waistband.

Aziraphale shivers, the bared skin taut and cool. He’s bent to Crowley’s touch like an offering. Of all the martyrs he’s known, or seen the hagiography of their deaths captured in art, it’s fitting that this is his impalement, the stake at which he’s burnt. The accounts of the martyrs say that they experienced supreme pleasure through their torture and demise, and Aziraphale is forced to admit it seems true. Crowley’s hand slides downwards to the soft cleft of his elbow, huffing breath in his ear before nibbling the soft lobe. Aziraphale lets his eyes roll up and submits to his ecstasy.

Crowley’s hand moves to Aziraphale’s head, stroking through his hair, long index finger over the lines of his face. His mouth follows after his fingers, kissing Aziraphale’s eyelids, tracing the line of his nose with a narrow tongue. Aziraphale shudders under him. Crowley’s hand slides down the side of the angel’s face, drawing the line of his jaw, coming to rest open palmed against the softness of his throat.

“Do you want this? Does this feel good?” Crowley’s mouth is pressed to Aziraphale’s ear, whispering into it.

“Yes, yes, I do oh darling, it feels… I want…” Aziraphale can’t help moving his hips in frustration.

“I know what you want, angel.” Crowley’s hand is gone from Aziraphale’s throat and slipping under his shirt along the curve of his belly

It's not the first time Crowley has touched him. They’ve had their jagged shards of lust and of sweetness, scattered through the centuries in looks, whispers, touches under tables and behind screens. 

But this, now… Crowley's tenderness, his displays of desire, of need. Asking Aziraphale to say he wants him, wants his friend, his lover, _his_ , completely. Blasting open the packed earth and rubble of broken pottery and pumice that built their barricades, Crowley has opened everything for him. And Aziraphale wants it all. The wretchedness that he sees coming, and some glimmer of the glory. Crowley’s hand moves along his ribs, as if feeling the shape of him, and for the second time that night - second time in decades - Aziraphale feels the twitch of his wings, shuddering and flexing behind him in the other realm.

\-------------

Aziraphale’s hands grip and release on the white bars of the bedstead above his head, shirt unbuttoned, nipples damp with Crowley’s spit, tight and exposed as the air breathes cool over them. He feels Crowley watching him, opening his eyes to see the demon kneeling between his spread legs. But he’s not looking at Aziraphale’s face. He’s looking down at the front of Aziraphale’s linen trousers, wet and clinging where he’s been leaking under Crowley’s hands and mouth on his body. Fingertips tracing the outline of the wetness, Crowley does look at him then, smiling at the wave of heat Aziraphale can feel bloom across his cheeks, his throat. The demon’s fingers slide up his ribcage, catching each nipple with a nail, a sizzle of sensation that brings Aziraphale’s hands away from the bed towards Crowley, crying out.

Crowley lifts his hands from the angel’s body, sitting back on his heels, drawing a whimper out of Aziraphale before he can even try to stop himself. 

“Don’t move, angel. I can’t touch you properly if you’re moving all about.”

“I want…” Aziraphale kicks his feet, thrashes his head a bit. He can’t keep a whine out of his voice. “I want to touch you, Crowley.”

“Doesn’t this feel good?” Crowley rakes his nails down Aziraphale’s sides, sliding his palms back up over the faint shiver of pain he’s left. Aziraphale’s shoulders crush against his ears as he arches his back off the bed under Crowley’s touch, moaning pathetically.

“Is that a yes, angel?” Crowley’s hands are at Aziraphale’s nipples, barely touching, curved nails scraping lightly over the hungry tightness of them. Crowley’s voice is warm and dark, shot through with amusement as he teases.

Aziraphale struggles. The demon is smiling at him again, wicked and loving. “Yes, yes, it feels so good.”

“Well, it feels good and it’s what I want so that’s what we’re doing. Hold still now. Pull on the bedstead if you need.” Crowley emphasizes his words by pinching both of Aziraphale’s tender nipples with his nails, before pulling them gently with his fingertips while Aziraphale fists the thin white brushed cast iron rails of the bed, his hips rising as Crowley leans over him, but he’s denied the relief of thrusting against Crowley’s body.

Crowley’s hands don’t stop moving over Aziraphale’s chest, his lips and tongue joining to trace the lines of hair on the angel’s body, to spirit over the ridges of muscle, slipping between tender rolls of soft flesh. Aziraphale doesn't know how he bears it, this endless infusion of pleasure, an overflowing rush that has filled him beyond his capacity and yet keeps coming. Crowley seems unsatisfied with anything less than touching the angel on every millimeter of his skin. When he finds a sensitive spot - Aziraphale moans, or arches his back, thrusts his hips, or spreads his legs, thighs pushing against the inside of Crowley’s where he’s straddled - there Crowley lingers, experiments. The inside of the bicep where the sleeve of his shirt has been pushed down. His nipples. The soft expanse of pale, hairless skin where Aziraphale’s belly meets his ribs. Crowley touches each of them with his fingers, his mouth, licking, stroking, kissing, pinching, exploring the vocabulary of Aziraphale’s body, establishing their language of pleasure.

After a period of time, Crowley will pause. It’s some indeterminate number of touches, licks, or perhaps he takes mercy on Aziraphale when he’s gasping, palms sweating and slipping against the bedstead where he’s gripping it. His cock is jerking and leaking against the damp front of his trousers. Crowley will lift his hands and his mouth and bring his face up to Aziraphale’s. Looking up, he feels as if he must be enveloping Crowley in the heat rising off his body as he lies under him, slit open and steaming.

Crowley kisses Aziraphale, their mouths opening to each other, and he’s lowering his hips at the same time, they grind together and the relief is so intense that it’s like Aziraphale’s been plunged into a cold bath. The shock of ice water fades, tingling, and there’s an ache behind his perineum as he feels Crowley’s thickness firm and hot against his own. Aziraphale’s cock dribbles. He's surrendering, spine relaxing under Crowley’s soft mouth on his, a sparkling circuit humming between their gently rocking hips and the slide of their lips where they kiss. The bedframe makes rhythmic creaking groans as Aziraphale clutches it in time with Crowley’s swaying thrusts against him, languorous waves of pleasure lapping green and gold behind his closed lids. 

\-------------

Crowley is curled up against his side again, their faces tucked together as Crowley whispers in Aziraphale’s ear. One hand is up on the pillow with them, holding Aziraphale’s head, fingers brushing his ear. The other is at his trouser front, tracing the hard outline of Aziraphale through the fabric, fiddling with the button at the top, opening it before returning to stroke Aziraphale again through his clothing.

“What I want... Have you ever done that?” Crowley's voice is homespun, raw silk in Aziraphale’s ear. He sounds almost… hesitant. A crack in the unflinching authority he’s wielded since their lips met, since the angel said yes.

"Yes, yes, I did once, in the beginning, but you can’t, I can’t heal them like that. So not since." Aziraphale is effortlessly truthful, incapable of prevaricating under Crowley's hands.

"Mmm. You can, angel, it’s just different." Crowley pauses, a breath. He might be licking his lips, Aziraphale hears a small sound in his ear before Crowley speaks again, his whisper lower, rougher. "Let me show you. Will you let me?"

‘You must let me,’ That’s what he’d said to Crowley all those decades ago, after the church. He wanted to give to Crowley, to reward him, so badly that he couldn’t see then that it was Crowley’s permission that was the true generosity on display. Crowley, who never denied him when he finally called, had let Aziraphale pleasure him that night, trusted the angel’s hands to hold him, belly bared, to give his climax into those hands, under the weight of Aziraphale’s body. Aziraphale can feel a bridge inside him between this night and that one, it's beams golden strands of angelic essence twined with green, brown, silver; ecstatic, verdant tendrils grow chaotically around the struts. He’s spent all these long years crossing it, to find himself here, with Crowley. Ready. What he wants is what Crowley wants.

“Yes, I will let you. Please Crowley”

\-------------

The room is warm and comfortable. Crowley had gotten up to close the window and turn on the slightly smelly baseboard heaters. He’d arranged a few things on the nightstand, obscured by Aziraphale’s books.

Aziraphale lies on his back, Crowley against his side. The head of Crowley’s cock against Aziraphale’s hip is a live ember, a focus of heat in the warm room. Crowley had directed him back onto the thin white linens, arranging them together just so after wordlessly removing all Aziraphale’s remaining clothes, and stripping off his own sticky briefs. It had been so long since they’d been naked together. They’d closed the public baths in England in the middle ages, so probably since then. He could go to the baths in the city with Crowley, Aziraphale thinks suddenly. Or maybe Crowley could take him to some rock pool spring in California, and they could be naked under the stars, like they’d been in pre-history, so long ago it’s a bit dim even in Aziraphale’s crystalline memory.

Crowley sits up slightly to run his hand up the inside of Aziraphale’s thighs where they’ve fallen together on the bed. Long fingers slide between them to the junction of his pelvis, brushing against his balls, which tighten under the touch, puckered and sensitive. Crowley’s hand grasps his right thigh, sinking apparently deliberately, into the soft, custardy fat there, pulling the angel’s legs apart, holding them spread while fixing him with his eyes. Aziraphale swallows. He breathes in and out. There are a thousand little spasms in his body, at the base of his cock, as the fire of Crowley’s touch on him continues to spark. 

Aziraphale feels small for all that he has two or three stone on Crowley, who is stroking the silken privacy of the tops of Aziraphale’s thighs, palm flattening against the meat of his leg to pull them open even further. He’s spread wide so Crowley can fit his whole long fingered hand at the split of him, finger pads drifting over the skin, pressing briefly against his opening. It feels like hours that Crowley has been touching him, every part of him, dragging him into a shaking, goose-fleshed mess. Aziraphale closes his eyes, tilting his hip, opening himself more for Crowley’s hand, tendering his most hidden flesh to the demon’s fingers. Lazily, Crowley drags his fingertips from Aziraphale’s slit, up his balls, tracing the skin at their seam. Aziraphale can’t keep quiet, can barely keep his hands on the bed frame as the demon’s fingers glide softly up the center of his shaft, pressing his hard, heavy cock back against his stomach, a gnaw of pleasure in his pelvis.

Crowley touches him with dry fingers, tips drifting over the shivering skin at the cleft of his legs, floating teasingly through the bush of hair at his groin. Eventually those fingers drift up his shaft to the head, smearing the precome there with his palm, slow circular drags across the underside of the glans. Soon, Aziraphale’s legs are shaking, Crowley continues his painstaking circling for a long time.

The ocean floating feeling is back, it’s the blurred edges from the grove the night before, but with a crystal core, a brilliant center where he is utterly clear. He can see Crowley’s face, similarly transformed, loose with desire, but his eyes are reciting verse, it's their epic, older than Gilgamesh, older than Bereishit even.

Crowley shifts on the bed, until he’s kneeling between Aziraphale’s legs, touching him there with fingers, now slippery. Aziraphale feels his body tighten against a lingering touch, and Crowley brushes his cock lightly with one slick palm, making him rise off the mattress, lightning arcing from his groin to his hands, white knuckled on the bed frame above his head. When his back returns to the bed and his eyes open, Crowley is watching him, smiling.

“You like that, angel?” His voice is syrupy and hot.

“Yes, yes I like it very much.” Aziraphale can’t help grinning back, and they smile at each other like fools for a long moment until Crowley slides the tip of his index finger inside him. Aziraphale gasps, high pitched, closing his eyes and pulling his knees against the curve of his belly, opening himself without restraint. The movement pulls Crowley deeper into him, other hand sliding up the expanse of thigh, spreading him even more open, everything exposed to Crowley’s eyes, his insistent touch.

“Christ angel, you’re the whole fucking dessert cart aren’t you?” Crowley laughs at the American idiom, but his voice vibrates with lust. Aziraphale is still quivering with a giggle when he feels Crowley’s mouth on him, tongue flat and tantalizingly still against the underside of his cockhead. He tries to thrust, pushing into the felted warmth. Crowley holds him flat, one hand on his thigh, one finger just inside him until he stills, panting slightly. Aziraphale hears himself whine, and Crowley slides a skillful tongue up and down, another long finger pushing in. Aziraphale breathes out with a groan, feeling...open. Crowley’s got both fingers inside in one lick, two.

Azirphale’s in the crashing surf now, the rush of sensation on his cock, at his opening, and inside him, as Crowley uses his mouth and his fingers to bring him to the edge and no further. Crowley’s seen him come enough times that he can draw back for a count whenever Aziraphale is close, knows his tells. There’s a building pressure, like the hills before a storm. With the pressure comes power. Aziraphale is capable, resilient, open, welcoming. He can take it. He lets go of the bedstead, reaches a slightly trembling hand to Crowley’s shining head between his legs.

“Please my darling, I’m ready, please show me.” 

After a final lazy lick, Crowley sits back on his heels, his fingers firm in Aziraphale’s body, other hand stroking the crease of the angel’s groin, the thrum of the vessel there an electrified pain, leaping up to meet Crowley’s touch. When Aziraphale raises his eyes to Crowley's, the demon’s face is gentle, brows open brackets, his mouth drawn up in the smallest smile. The throb of Aziraphale’s heart is his cavernous chest is matched by the pulsing pressure of Crowley’s fingertips against the artery at the top of his thigh. Like Crowley is reaching right in through his blood to grasp that beating organ. Aziraphale reaches his still outstretched hand towards his lover, curving his own mouth with an answering delight. Crowley tilts his head to kiss Aziraphale’s fingertips, taking them lightly onto his tongue, nipping once with his sharp teeth. He moves the fingers resting in the angel, pressing them up inside him to meet the pulse at his groin. Aziraphale’s pelvis aches, simmering, then it’s too much. He throws both hands back above his head, crying, desperate cock trying futilely to thrust.

Crowley pulls out, Aziraphale jumping and crying as fingers drag over his rim, grasping at Crowley’s withdrawing touch, leaving him wanting . But then Crowley is on top of his belly, his chest, the weight, his heat, is dense and welcome. Crowley’s cockhead slips between Aziraphale’s legs, hand into Aziraphale’s hair, cradling his head. They look at each other, breath forced and hot, and then Crowley is under Aziraphale’s soft chin, tilting him to take the angel’s throat in his jaw, teeth pressing gently against the cartilage of his larynx. He bites harder when Aziraphale gives a moaning cough, before relinquishing his hold to lick his way up to the angel’s ear. 

“Do you feel me… angel…I’m...” Crowley’s voice is uneven, pained, in his ear, Crowley’s cock a demanding pressure at the opening between his legs. “Let yourself open.. just let me in, you’ll feel it, you’ll feel it…I’ll show you, you know I will.” Crowley’s hand finds his, their fingers entwining crookedly. Crowley’s mouth is against his cheek, his ear, hissing soft things, small kisses, hipbones wedged like iron between Aziraphale’s thighs. Aziraphale’s cock, wretched with need, ruts gratefully against the slight cushion of Crowley’s belly. He can feel that Crowley’s force is enough to enter him only if he softens to allow it. And so he does, opening his mouth, opening everything. The stretch is a burn but he chases it, exhaling with a rush as the flare of the head pushes inside with a grunt from Crowley.

“Aaaaaahhhhhhh. Ohhhhh.” There might be words. Crowley moves his hand from guiding his cock to stroke Aziraphale’s thigh encouragingly, moving into the angel with patient but unsparing strength. Aziraphale works Crowley’s length into himself, panting and crying through the girth until they find themselves seated together. Crowley rocks slightly in and out of Aziraphale’s body, their mouths touching, Crowley’s tongue pushed inside his lips, there’s no refuge anywhere from this glorious impalement. Every nerve in the swollen flesh of his opening is thrumming, pleasure with an aftertaste of chili.

Crowley begins to thrust, slowly at first and Aziraphale is adrift, dispersing and dematerializing. He’s seeing himself through Crowley’s eyes, no desire hidden now, legs spread in a shameless welcome, the radiance of his angelic energies visible, looping and swirling into shapes that might be petals, constellations, hands. And on the next breath it’s passed and he’s back against the bed, lifting his hips to meet Crowley, arching himself open, the blossoming of his energies still shimmering around them. Crowley is pressed into him with his full length now, it’s so deep, Aziraphale is penetrated all the way to the back of his throat. He opens his mouth, the swoops and cascades of green and gold cradling them both pouring out through his moans.

They’re there for hours then, it seems, Crowley never lets Aziraphale rise from the mattress, open under the force of his thrusts. For some long periods, they barely move, Crowley’s hips tilting lazily back and forth, stoking the hot slag of want in Aziraphale’s pelvis, mouths together, sucking and sipping at each other's tongues. Then with a growl, a tugging bite at Aziraphale’s earlobe or a brief touch of fangs at his throat again, Crowley will hold him down and fuck into him. When Aziraphale cries, struggling to open his legs wider, take it deeper, Crowley, rakes the back of a thigh with his nails before grasping the unguarded back of the angel’s knee, pushing the bent leg up into his belly, spreading him, gutted open.

At last, as Crowley drives into him, breathing and licking at his ear, Aziraphale feels himself cresting the peak, he’s miles open now, Crowley must sense the shift in his clench, in his cries, because he’s panting encouragement to him, sliding a slippery, scalding palm against the head of the angel’s cock, telling him he can come, come with Crowley inside him. And Aziraphale does.

There’s no white out, no blank space or lost time, rather the overwhelming relief of pleasure as he draws Crowley even further into him, he’s crying out into Crowley’s mouth, wanting him there with him. He hears himself begging, begging Crowley to come inside him as his own spend spurts out of him. This is it, he can contain him, hold them both, Crowley will push inside him and fill him, he will be a home for Crowley, a shared garden, a set table in a green valley.

“Yes, I will, you want it angel, you want it inside you, you can take me?” Crowley’s voice is ragged in Aziraphale’s ear, his thrusts almost painfully deep and slow as his fingers strip the angel’s cock of its last drops.

“Please Crowley, yes.” Aziraphale feels tears starting now from the burning pleasure of being fucked through the last of his orgasm, and from his desperation to feel Crowley let go into him, his body’s need mirrored by the surging of energies around them. There’s a whiff of scorched sheets, and Crowley is moaning long and deep, his hips so pressed against Aziraphale’s body there’s nothing between them. Crowley’s hands are clenching, he’s taken Aziraphale’s in his again, twisting their knuckles together in the sheets as he thrusts the last of his release into the angel’s body. Crowley is whispering something into Aziraphale’s mouth, and then there is blank space at last, open blue sky, green motes drifting through sunlight.

\-------------

Aziraphale is draped over Crowley’s narrow chest, eyes closed, face pressed into the demon’s neck. Crowley’s long arm is snaking down the curve of Aziraphale’s spine, two fingers inside him, not moving. His other hand grips the angel’s thigh, pulling it up to open Aziraphale to the penetration. Occasionally Crowley will flex his fingers slightly apart, or send a little vibration through them to Aziraphale’s used opening, the rim still slick with come and lube, each touch on it causing the angel to shiver in his lover’s arms. Aziraphale’s softened, satiated cock is touching Crowley’s length, half hard against his stomach. The demon really is inexhaustible, Aziraphale thinks happily. The angel’s back arches slightly, taking Crowley deeper.

“How… how is it possible do you think? That I want…” Aziraphale pauses, feeling the throb of his raw opening, the hungry pulse of it, nose and mouth full of the smells of Crowley’s hair, their come, the salty assam scent of Crowley’s chest, scattered with sparse hair under his cheek. There’s a matching twist of fear in his chest as he realizes he’s giving voice to his questions.

Crowley makes a contented noise and begins to move his hand, fucking Aziraphale very softly, fingers dragging gently back and forth, slowly, both of them feeling every millimeter of movement. He’s talking just above the angel’s ear. Aziraphale lets his eyes deepen into darkness, the pull of Crowley’s fingers and the warmth of his breath safe and sedating.

“You know, without it, without desire, chickens wouldn't lay eggs, angel. No babies would be born, no... no plants would grow, no houses get built.. Fuck, even the electrons want each other... Desire is the basis of this… this everything. You can just… allow it to be. There's no…” the demon swallows, the words he’s trying to say seeming to sit bitter in his mouth. “There's no sin in it. It’s, it’s good, _very_ good. To want.”[[2](%E2%80%9C#note2%E2%80%9D)] Aziraphale feels Crowley’s lips against his hair, fingers pushing deeper inside him, resting there. Crowley’s soothing words are blurring together with the angel’s exhaustion and the sensations in his body. He is comforted. Aziraphale dreams of chickens, and a small house with a garden, dark furrows of freshly turned earth.  


\-------------

Crowley wakes suddenly, face in Aziraphale’s hair as he’s curled himself around the angel from behind. Their bodies are hot, sweat holding them together. The room is dark again. Had they made love all morning and slept all afternoon? His fingers must have slipped out of the angel after they both fell asleep. The thought makes his cock move, it’s already mostly hard where it’s pressed along the cleft of Aziraphale’s body. Crowley allows himself to imagine he’s still asleep for a few breaths while he ruts against the angel. Then more deliberately, squeezing him, nosing at his nape, whuffing into his ear. Aziraphale’s body is tacky where Crowley’s cock is dragging across his skin. He knows the angel wants to wake up to the leavings of their sex. It will hurt when he opens his legs, thighs stuck together with dried lube and come. Crowley could slip right back into his body, join them together again. Aziraphale murmurs under him as he thrusts once more against the warm curve, but doesn’t wake.

Pulling on his jeans and t-shirt, hard-on uncomfortable against the button fly, Crowley climbs barefoot up the fire escape off the kitchen. Back against the side of a gabled window, he looks out over the rooftops of the Pines. He can hear and smell the ocean, lights shining out of warm windows, orange fireflies moving in the darkness marking groups of men smoking, laughing, cruising.

Crowley pulls a zippo and a packet of clove cigarettes from the back pocket of his jeans. He doesn’t think too closely about how they haven’t gotten crushed. The ritual of the flare of the lighter, the spicy smoke, drifting out of his nostrils, calms him. Barbra is floating in from an open window a few houses away. 

He’d seen every iteration of _A Star is Born_ at the cinema and honestly liked each one better than the last. He’d sported Kris Kristofferson’s shoulder length layers and facial hair for a few months in 1976, but the beard was too itchy.

_I am a woman in love  
And I do anything  
To get you into my world  
And hold you within  
It's a right I defend  
Over and over again  
What do I do?  
With you eternally mine  
In love there is  
No measure of time_

It’s a sign of growth, Crowley theorizes. He expects that the angel will abandon him again after this. He doesn’t want that. But he’s waiting for it. Gone are the days when he’d be not only hurt but shocked. 

There's only Aziraphale. Their marriage was arranged, as it were, their earthbound exiles inextricable from each other. But the inevitability of their pairing can't be untangled from the heat of Crowley's need, or the narcoleptic seduction of the tenderness he feels for the angel. It's part of his being, so there's no point in thinking about escaping it. He'll never be out of Aziraphale's orbit, not when he leaves London, not even if he left the planet. Wherever I go, there he is.

Climbing down the fire escape, the metal is cold on the bare arches of Crowley’s feet. He swings himself onto the kitchen window sill before slipping inside. His hard-on had gone down during his melancholy smoke, but now he’s thinking about the angel in the bed, naked, fucked open. He’ll wake Aziraphale up this time, spend an hour inside him before washing up and going to the diner. Crowley feels a wave of weakness surge over him as he contemplates a morning spent fucking the angel and then watching him eat an American breakfast with biscuits, and sausage and eggs and god knows what else. He might not survive. 

Crowley’s cock is unaffected by his turmoil, and eventually it encourages him to let go of the kitchen counter and walk quietly into the bedroom, stripping off his shirt and then his jeans, balancing awkwardly like a stork to pull the legs off. Aziraphale doesn’t wake, the round bulk of his body splayed under the white sheet. Crowley’s under it with him in a breath, the fat urgency of his cock slipping against Aziraphale’s bare flesh. Aziraphale stirs, pushing back against him while groaning, welcomingly.

“Good morning my dear.” His voice is thick, clotted. Before tea.

“Good morning, angel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 “Called the Siri Gaitri Mantra and more commonly known as Ra Ma Da Sa, it holds within it eight sounds that stimulate the Kundalini flow within the central channel of the spine for healing. It brings balance into the core of our energetic body and floods it with new energy.” [Mantrapedia](https://www.spiritvoyage.com/mantra/Ra-Ma-Da-Sa/MAN-000098.aspx)
> 
> author’s note: this mantra is used by ‘kundalini yoga’ followers of Yogi Bhajan, who credit him with introducing it to the world in 1973. I haven’t found any other sources for it or traditional uses, but I'm not that knowledgeable about it. I practiced kundalini yoga for several years 10+ years ago and that’s where I learned it. If you know more please lmk! [return to text](return1)
> 
> 2 Crowley’s speech is from the Talmud, sortof. The Rabbis are discussing the Yetzer Ha Ra (‘evil inclination’, or Desire) and the Yetzer Ha Tov, the “good inclination.” You can [read more of the sources](https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/2384?lang=bi) if you want a wild ride. The Rabbis are wondering why the Torah specifies that humans are ‘very good’ when all the rest of creation is ‘good,’ since humans were created with both the ‘evil’ and good desires in them.
> 
> _“Rabbi Nahman said in Rabbi Samuel's name: 'Behold, it was good' refers to the Good Desire; 'And behold, it was very good' refers to the Evil Desire. (It only says 'very good' after man was created with both the good and bad inclinations, in all other cases it only says 'and God saw that it was good') Can then the Evil Desire be very good? That would be extraordinary! But without the Evil Desire, however, no man would build a house, take a wife and beget children; and thus said Solomon: 'Again, I considered all labour and all excelling in work, that it is a man's rivalry with his neighbour.' (Ecclesiastes 4:4).” **Bereishit Rabbah 9:7**_  
>  [ return to text ]


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